Graham McDonald, CityNews music reviewer with a famously sharp ear who can spot a flat note from a mile away, has been named the Australian Art & Objects Maker of the Year for his Art Deco mandolin. 

Known among Canberra’s music circles for his frank comments on pitch – which have sometimes raised eyebrows in local music companies – McDonald credits his acuity in part to decades of working with instruments.

McDonald has spent years crafting fiddles, guitars, mandolins, ukuleles and bouzoukis.

He describes instrument-making as “just as much a tactile art as an auditory one. You’re always feeling, bending and twisting wood, so it’s a combination of sound and touch – you get muscle memory as well as musical memory.”

His award-winning mandolin is based on a sketch he discovered at the National Music Centre in Dakota among the papers of renowned Brooklyn-based archtop jazz guitar builder Jimmy D’Aquisto, who died 30 years ago.

“It had a lobe shape,” McDonald says. “I thought that was interesting, so I decided to make one. Now I’ve made four of them, each a little different as I’ve tweaked my own design.”

He can’t remember exactly where he first read about the competition, which this year attracted more than 400 entries from 44 countries, but he thought it would be worth entering.

“I thought if I was going to enter something it should be an instrument which was distinctive and did not look like every other mandolin,” he says.

The instrument features a spruce soundboard and a resonating body and neck of blackheart sassafras from Tasmania to add some extra visual interest. McDonald says he is agnostic about the timber’s origin – as long as it’s high quality. 

McDonald has been making stringed instruments since the 1980s, sometimes full-time and sometimes alongside other roles.

“I build on commission as well as make things that just appeal and might be interesting and a challenge to design and make,” he says.

While putting his children through school, he worked as director for the Australian Folk Trust and the National Folk Festival, and on staff at the National Film and Sound Archive. 

“There is great joy in hearing a talented musician create music on one of my instruments,” he says.

“I did build an Irish bouzouki for a well known Irish musician, Donal Lunny. Very well known in Irish music circles, and pretty well unknown outside! 

“He left it in a car on Okinawa and the soundboard split so I don’t know where it ended up. 

“Mostly I sell to amateur or semi-pro musicians who want an instrument made to their specifications.

“I have reviewed the Canberra Mandolin Orchestra a couple of times, several of whom play my mandolins, but I am only reviewing their performance, not the instruments.”

So, where is the prize-winning mandolin?

“It was sold to a woman in Victoria, who I have never met. She saw it advertised on my website and sent me the money,” says McDonald.